{"id":23677,"date":"2026-09-11T16:37:05","date_gmt":"2026-09-12T00:37:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/?p=23677"},"modified":"2026-09-11T16:37:05","modified_gmt":"2026-09-12T00:37:05","slug":"choosin-texas-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/2026\/09\/11\/choosin-texas-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Choosin&#8217; Texas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe title=\"Spotify Embed: Choosin&amp;apos; Texas\" style=\"border-radius: 12px\" width=\"100%\" height=\"152\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/embed\/track\/65DbTqJKhbwqYbZ1Okr0rc?si=a863236396db4ab5&amp;utm_source=oembed\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/nUsrYVxrDwI?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/p>\n<p>You can sing along to it, it&#8217;s got melody and a catchy chorus, what a concept!<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, most of the rest of today&#8217;s &#8220;hits&#8221; are filled with 808s and other synthesized instruments and chord changes can be rare, sometimes there is only one chord!<\/p>\n<p>But &#8220;Choosin&#8217; Texas&#8221; has far outstripped them in popularity. It is the only track that has risen above, that is a true national (international!) hit, that seemingly everybody is aware of.<\/p>\n<p>That is not the case with the rest of the Spotify Top 50. The songs may have chart numbers, but most people have never heard of them, never mind actually heard them, contrary to the hype in the media and inside business publications.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s not solely an old fart thing. Most people are unaware of most &#8220;hits&#8221; today, there&#8217;s just too much in the channel.<\/p>\n<p>But &#8220;Choosin&#8217; Texas&#8221; has risen above.<\/p>\n<p>Now there&#8217;s been a ton of focus on the lyrics&#8230;probably because they&#8217;re the easiest thing to write about, but really, &#8220;Choosin&#8217; Texas&#8221; is successful because of the underlying music.<\/p>\n<p>Yes, it&#8217;s a good story, and &#8220;Texas&#8221; is a hook, but this is not revolutionary, not twenty one weeks at number one on the Hot 100, second only to Mariah Carey&#8217;s &#8220;All I Want for Christmas is You&#8221; in longevity.<\/p>\n<p>This track has not been ghettoized, it&#8217;s not solely a country phenomenon, it&#8217;s a worldwide phenomenon!<\/p>\n<p>How can this be?<\/p>\n<p>Now when Tom Petty played the Fonda for a week, he labeled today&#8217;s country music &#8220;the rock music of the seventies.&#8221; And that&#8217;s true in most cases. This ain&#8217;t the twang of the country western songs of yore, oftentimes sans a fiddle or a steel guitar or banjo and a vocal affect, these modern country songs are closer to classic hits than the rest of the stuff purveyed today.<\/p>\n<p>When did the music business become too hip for the room?<\/p>\n<p>Well, the last big revolution was hip-hop, which started in the eighties but really flourished in the nineties and early 2000s.<\/p>\n<p>Rap was a reaction to stale rock. It was the sound of the street. It contained the truth rock music had long lost.<\/p>\n<p>And rap was more than music, hip-hop was a culture, well delineated in the media. But this all started decades ago. Today?<\/p>\n<p>Sure, we&#8217;ve got Kendrick, but mainstream rap ain&#8217;t much different from the rock of the late eighties, formulaic, made for a market. It&#8217;s not real, it&#8217;s a cartoon. The lyrics are fantasies littered with braggadocio. There&#8217;s no vulnerability evidenced, unlike in &#8220;Choosin&#8217; Texas,&#8221; wherein the Tennessee woman loses the man to a denizen of Texas.<\/p>\n<p>That people can relate to. Being on the losing end. And how refreshing in our everybody&#8217;s a winner culture, where it&#8217;s all about putting up a good front.<\/p>\n<p>But it&#8217;s not only hip-hop, did you listen to the new Miley record, &#8220;Bass Persuades&#8221;? It&#8217;s the antithesis of &#8220;Choosin&#8217; Texas,&#8221; filled with modern, electric sounds, a whispered vocal at first. &#8220;Bass Persuades&#8221; is anything but a one listen smash, but we&#8217;ve been subjected to Miley hype for months now, how she switched labels&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Who exactly is &#8220;Bass Persuades&#8221; made for? Well, maybe it works in dance clubs. Or maybe snippets can be utilized on TikTok, but most people are never going to cotton to this track, but &#8220;Choosin&#8217; Texas&#8221;&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Choosin&#8217; Texas&#8221; was not foisted upon the public, the public embraced it!<\/p>\n<p>And it&#8217;s formulaic in the old way, with the aforementioned melody and catchy chorus, what a relief.<\/p>\n<p>People want to be involved in songs, they want to own them, and the best way to achieve that is by making a record that not only can they comprehend, but that they can sing along to&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Now country has traditionally been seen as a backwater, made for only part of the population. And at this late date, it&#8217;s seen as part of the red South, and it&#8217;s a genre that is still controlled by country radio, even though there&#8217;s so much great music that doesn&#8217;t fit the format, the foremost exponent being Jason Isbell&#8230; But the most respected, most award-winning act in country today is Chris Stapleton, and change the vocal just a touch and you find someone who is closer to Gov&#8217;t Mule than what dominates the country hit parade.<\/p>\n<p>And Stapleton plays stadiums.<\/p>\n<p>Begging the question&#8230; Despite all the pooh-poohing from the intelligentsia, is country the dominant format today, is it country that contains the heartbeat of America?<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a stealth attack, &#8220;Choosin&#8217; Texas&#8221; has been embraced by the left as well as the right, the media is championing it and&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Can you relate to &#8220;Bass Persuades&#8221;?<\/p>\n<p>I certainly can&#8217;t.<\/p>\n<p>And relatability is key.<\/p>\n<p>So the question is why we don&#8217;t have more records like this. Why do the labels keep foisting this narrowcasted junk upon us. Niche product with a sliver of very active fans which most people will never listen to.<\/p>\n<p>Adele sold more CDs than anybody, but no one in America signed another Adele. But Olivia Dean inhabits the soulful soft lane that is not that far off from Adele&#8217;s, yet she had to come from England. People heard Olivia Dean and immediately embraced her and her music. Sure, &#8220;Man I Need&#8221; was all over TikTok, but snippets of one song do not lead to a sold out arena tour&#8230;no, the general public embraced Dean, if for no other reason than her music is LISTENABLE! Things go better with it. You can put on the Olivia Dean album and relax, it sets a mood. Most of the other stuff, especially the metal, if you&#8217;re not a hipster or you&#8217;re not angry it&#8217;s not for you.<\/p>\n<p>So why can&#8217;t there be more Ella Langleys and &#8220;Choosin Texas&#8221;-like songs? This is not Kraftwerk, this is not sui generis, it&#8217;s positively mainstream.<\/p>\n<p>But the true mainstream pop hit has become a lost art.<\/p>\n<p>This is beyond cult, this is beyond Taylor Swift, who went pop to broaden her audience but then country ascended and pop descended. &#8220;Choosin&#8217; Texas&#8221; is for everyone.<\/p>\n<p>And that&#8217;s the point.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You can sing along to it, it&#8217;s got melody and a catchy chorus, what a concept! Meanwhile, most of the rest of today&#8217;s &#8220;hits&#8221; are filled with 808s and other synthesized instruments and chord changes can be rare, sometimes there is only one chord! But &#8220;Choosin&#8217; Texas&#8221; has far outstripped them in popularity. It is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-music"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-69T","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23677"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23677\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23678,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23677\/revisions\/23678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}